A Mind Wide Open
by Ginny Ha-ha
Summary: The suspects are not always the guilty ones; the hero isn't always the first to know; sometimes, that takes brains... or bad luck. Mandy Broklehurst is about to end up under circumstances in which she has no control...
1. The Colours of Magic

A Mind Wide Open; chapter 1  
  
By Ginny Ha-ha  
  
Today is the first day of the rest  
  
of our lives!  
  
Tomorrow is too late to pretend  
  
Everything's all right;  
  
I'm not getting any younger as long  
  
As you don't get any older  
  
I'm not going to state that yesterday never was.  
  
-- Green Day --  
  
~*~  
  
I'm sorry; I've been terrible at writing (well… posting) lately, I know! This is the main thing I've been working on, and I'm fairly pleased with it.  
  
J. K. Rowling owns Harry and his school mates. I own, well, whoever someone else doesn't. Please read and review!  
  
Incidentally, this chapter is for Will, for his help, ideas, and putting up with me moaning about writer's block!!  
  
~ Gin ~  
  
~*~  
  
The wind howled. Rain poured down from the sky, which was steel grey with clouds. They hung heavy over the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, threatening, pouring fourth water so that it was less of a shower, and more an ocean being tipped from above.  
  
    The forest stood silhouetted, black against the sky. The only light came from the moon and the windows of the great castle, and even they were almost obscured by the solid curtain of water that covered the landscape.  
  
    Rain slapped against the skin of the girl who toiled across the uneven ground, wrapped in her black school cloak, pointed hat rammed so far onto her head, and collar turned so far up, that her face was almost completely hidden. Fierce dark brown eyes glared out over the turned-up collar of her cloak. Every so often, she stumbled, tripping over a sodden lump of mud, or a stone, her trailing shoelaces lashing against her tights, leaving brown lines of watery mud impressioned where they had slapped.  
  
     The girl muttered to herself and felt in her pocket for her wand, in the hope that a good Impervious spell might act as some protection from the British weather. She pointed it towards herself, muttering; "Impervious!" Nothing happened. "Come on... you bloody thing..." her words were all but swept away by the screaming wind. "Impervious…Oh for crap's sake!" She gave the wand a vicious shake. "'could have sworn that was the right spell... Stupid, stupid, stupid …Urgh..." She continued her soggy way across the grounds, still muttering angrily to herself.  
  
    She reached the castle door some minutes later, passed through it, and squelched her way up to the Ravenclaw common room, entering via the rotating bookcase.  
  
    A wave of warmth swept over her as she entered, only serving to make the girl more aware of the way her wet clothes clung to her. The fire was ablaze, students sitting round it in comfy chairs, chatting, laughing and playing various board games. She ignored them as they stared at her soaking figure, and stalked through the room, head held high in defiance of anyone who might mistake her for someone who was remotely interested in anything they had to say.  
  
She entered her dormitory shivering with wet and cold. Thank God! Finally, she could get a change of clothes and a chance to relax!  
  
A gawky and adenoidal girl with thick red hair and a northern accent, by the name of Lisa Turpin, glanced up from the novel she was reading stretched out on her bed. "Oh… Hiya Mandy, I didn't see you come in." She paused, and skimmed a few paragraphs of novel before continuing. "Raining out, is it?"  
  
Mandy Brocklehurst stood in the doorway, dripping wet, her uniform clinging to her shivering form. Water was running off her hair down her nose. "Not much. Not so as anyone'd notice." She pushed her lank fringe out of her eyes, which was dripping water down her face in little rivers.  
  
"Oh, good." Lisa returned to her book, presumably oblivious to the sarcasm. Mandy sighed, irritated, and began the process of getting changed out of her wet clothes into an unflattering pair of pyjamas decorated with dancing hedgehogs.  
  
Close to, she was an ungracious, flat-chested, rather plain girl of sixteen, with fair hair cropped short like a boys', currently flattened to her skull with wetness. Her oval face bore clever features, and her dark eyes denoted a certain hint of sharpness, which suggested that she knew that she was a deal more intelligent then most people, but had only recently realised that it was a good idea not to let other people discover this. She began viciously towelling her hair dry, booting her hat into a distant corner of the room.  
  
"Have fun in detention?" Lisa said.  
  
"Oh yes," Mandy put on a heavily sarcastic tone, dumping the towel on the floor to join her extensive collection of odd socks, "Abso-bloody-lutely spiffing."  
  
"Why didn't you put an Impervious spell on yourself, eh, you daft prat?" Lisa gave her sideways smile, as if pleased at having realised that Mandy hadn't.  
  
"Do you think I didn't try?"  
  
"Oh, is your wand still playing up, then?"  
  
"Take a wild guess, Lis'."  
  
"Well, if I knew, I wouldn't have asked you, would I? There's no need to be so snappish--"  
  
"Lisa?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Shaddup." Mandy sat down heavily on her bed, and picked at a loose thread on her blue and bronze duvet. "What time is it?"  
  
"Getting on for nine thirty PM, I'd say."  
  
"I suspected as much." She yawned, and flopped backwards onto her bed. "That's that, then; I'm going to sleep. You can read using just the one lamp, can't you?"  
  
"Well, all right, I'll give it a go, since I'm in a generous mood. It's bad for my eyes, though."  
  
"Good good."  
  
Mandy extinguished a number of the candles that lit the dorm with her finger and thumb, leaving Lisa to read using one sole candle next to her bed. Mandy flopped onto her own four poster, and allowed herself to doze...  
  
~*~  
  
Life had been getting on top of Mandy recently-- almost literally. Her mind felt as though it was being squashed. She had no real idea why. Probably just, well, life... Or one of those displacement activities that one of her other dorm mates, Padma Patil, was so keen on… Or something.  
  
Just lately, though, it seemed that Mandy always felt odd.  
  
Sort of… compressed, yet elongated, like she was constantly wearing braces, only not on her teeth. This stupid Herbology detention for 'forgetting' her homework hadn't helped.  
  
             Tonight, it felt as if someone was trying to push her entire body right through the mattress. Mandy's head ached dully, and she watched vivid green and blood red spots flashing and dancing behind her eyelids.  
  
She was almost getting used to it. The stress had been present for several days now, and was showing no signs of abating. She'd been briefly to Madam Pomfrey, who had forced some sort of vile-tasting pink stuff down her throat, which had completely failed to do anything to help, and had given her a tendency to dream about prawns.  
  
Mandy had never liked hospitals, and, with a knowledge born of experience, distrusted many of their treatments. Besides, they were full of sick people, and the smell alone was always ghastly, even at Hogwarts; a kind of mix of cabbage, sour cheese, and disinfectant.  
  
She sighed, and turned over in bed. It was all right for her dorm mates!  
  
Lisa Turpin was as blunt in her manners as a brick wall; she was not a naturally pretty child. Tall, pale and angular, she constantly looked as though she was trying to swallow her front teeth. She was one of those people who seemed to move as though they were being dragged along by a string, and, Mandy suspected, couldn't find organise a piss-up in a brewery, so to speak. But still-- somehow—she managed to get through life with fantastic marks in everything, and she only ever worried about things like who was dating who, and whose sister had snogged which boy behind someone else's back, and what they were going to do about it. She was popular, in a strange kind of way; everyone knew who she was, or at least had heard the name. Whether they liked her or not was another matter entirely. Mandy found her bearable, and could talk to her happily enough when she felt like a gossip.  
  
And then there was Sue Li. Sue was… well, Sue; delicate, philosophical, and absolutely infuriatingly quiet. It made Mandy want to hit her. She rarely volunteered any information on herself, and could sit, apparently in thought, for hours at a time. How could someone just be like that? It was, quite frankly, completely and utterly weird. She was one of those people who worried a lot about the purpose of life, and weather stepping on an insect could change the world—it had never occurred to Mandy to let that bother her. Insects were made to be stepped on or ignored, depending on how painful it was when they bit you. But Sue was odd, and cared about things like that, for some reason Mandy had never been able to fathom.  
  
Padma Patil, on the other hand, could talk at length about almost any subject you could care to mention, and could quite happily have ruled the world in her spare time-- probably even whilst doing her homework and juggling at the same time. But ask her who was dating Terry Boot, or whether Justin Finch-Fletchley had suddenly showed an unerring desire to dress up in ladies lingerie (which he hadn't yet— or at least, Mandy hoped not, even if he was as camp as a row of tents), and she'd have no idea. She seemed to be under the vague impression that Harry Potter was dating Rita Skeeter. And she collected Muggle stamps.  
  
Mandy, though… she was permanently confused.  
  
Her marks had started to deteriorate since they had returned from the last summer holidays, and her mind, if not feeling squashed, was always buzzing. It felt as though a colony of bees had established itself inside her head, which, quite apart from anything else, was incredibly irritating. Bees were all right, she reasoned, but her head was not the place for them. You couldn't step on them there, for one thing. At least, not without a deal of pain.  
  
Imaginary bees were worse, if only because she had a very vivid imagination. She considered this to be one large bane of her life—it came just after being short, flat-chested and having a mouth full of metalwork. Oh, and the inability to get a boyfriend. Not forgetting the fact that she was as stubborn as the day was long; nor did Mandy hold herself above using popular clichés.  
  
If it was a perfect world, she would eventually had fallen into a dreamless sleep whilst mulling over these thoughts, and woken up bright and early the next morning, ready to face the day ahead and have an, if not brilliant, at least fairly decent day.  
  
If only.  
  
~*~  
  
   
  
The room pulsed. She could feel it. The room was pulsing, deep and heavy, like the heartbeat of a mountain. The air felt to her as if it had been stretched thin, and then twanged. It hurt to breathe, like the air was caught in her throat. Elastic… the whole atmosphere must be made of elastic! Dizziness overtook the girl's mind. She tried to move, but found that she could not; her limbs seemed locked into place.  
  
Colours swirled in front of the terrified child; a deep whirlpool of brightness, trying to suck her in with almost irresistible power. Light shouldn't pull like that! It felt like she was balancing on the edge of an enormous whirlpool, made of a million shades of every colour.  
  
The girl felt her mind falling. Thick, bright, colours rose in a smoky wall before her eyes, almost like the colours of the rainbow. Only they were too vivid for that. They had more presence; more power. They were more like the…the…the colours of magic...  
  
Her body seemed to be channelling an irresistible force of electricity. It ran through her, making her eyes sting and her hair stand on end. Her teeth felt on edge.  
  
Sweat pored into the girl's eyes, making the shapes and crazy colouration become yet more mingled in her already spinning mind. The girl squeezed her eyes shut.  
  
"Stop it!" she found herself ordering the advancing sweep of colour, "Keep back!"  
  
The whirlpool lights wavered, but only for a second. They flowed forwards, pulling her towards them, sucking her in. Deeper… deeper…  
  
A shrill scream rose in her throat, splitting through the heave and pull of the light and air like a carving knife through water; ineffectual. She screamed again…  
  
And the world exploded.  
  
"Mandy! Mandy!"  
  
"My God, Mandy, are you all right?!"  
  
"W… wha'?" Mandy pulled herself off of her pillow, trembling. It was damp with sweat. Every muscle in her body ached, as if she'd been lifting dumbbells all night, and she was still breathing hard.  
  
She felt for the glass of water on her bedside cabinet. She downed it in one, although her shaking hands caused her to spill a fair deal down the front of her night-dress.  
  
"Bad dream?" Padma Patil gave her friend a concerned look. Mandy nodded mutely, yet to find her voice.  
  
 Lisa looked impressed.  
  
"good grief, Mand', that must have been some fat nightmare for you to scream like that!"  
  
"I never knew you had it in you." Padma agreed, nodding. This made Mandy feel ever so slightly more seasick.  
  
"Yes, well..." she paused to collect her spinning thoughts, "I'm fine." She leaned back against the wall behind her. "It was just a dream. You know how stressed out I've been feeling lately. It was probably something to do with that."  
  
"It could be a displacement activity. Too much worrying about everything else." Padma suggested, watching Mandy closely.  
  
She shrugged. It might be.  
  
What was a displacement activity anyway?  
  
Lisa stared at Padma for a long moment before dismissively continuing.  
  
"It was flippin' scary, you know? We were telling ghost stories, and Sue was telling us 'bout this doll that come alive and killed this girl, with blood all over the place. We were all getting really jumpy, you know, and then you go and give that blood curdling scream. Wicked!"  
  
"Oh. Really." It was too late at night for this. Lisa sometimes made Mandy feel like banging her own head against a wall.  
  
Lisa tended to be abrupt and, as a rule, it didn't occur to her to be sympathetic to people; even those who had just woken in the middle of the night screaming their heads off.  
  
The final Ravenclaw girl, Sue Li, had not moved from her bed on the other side of the room. She grinned slightly. Mandy gave her a wan smile back.  
  
Sue was a quiet, round-shouldered girl, easily embarrassed, who got on with life by doing her best not to get in people's way. Mandy never interfered with her, and Sue never interfered with Mandy. That suited everyone just fine.  
  
"Well, I don't know about you," Padma broke the silence, "But I am going to bed. I have a splitting headache, and on top of that, we've got to get to Transfiguration early tomorrow, remember? We have a test, and I, for one, want to have time to prepare."  
  
"Oh, bollocks, I forgot! Crap, man." Lisa moaned, shuffling over to her own bed, and falling into it with a sigh.  
  
"It'll be fine," Sue prophesised, "It always is."  
  
"You've never exactly done badly, after all, have you?" added Lisa.  
  
"No," Padma frowned, "But that's not really the point. The point is I don't ever want to. Well, good night."  
  
"Night-night."  
  
"Sleep tight."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
All was silent for a long moment.  
  
Lisa sat up again. "Has anyone seen Boris?"  
  
"Your stupid teddy?"  
  
"He's not stupid. He brings me luck. I'll need him in the test tomorrow."  
  
"I hope you drop him in a cauldron."  
  
"Oh, shut up, Diamanda-Marie Brocklehurst."  
  
"Same to you, Liesel Aria Turpin."  
  
"Huh! It's not my fault I have a stupid name!"  
  
"No more is it mine." Mandy paused. "Either way, they chose this stupid assignment at exactly the wrong time. Just when my stupid wand keeps playing up."  
  
"Hannah Abbot's has been going funny, too." Sue said.  
  
"Has it?"  
  
"Yes. I feel for her. She's not exactly gifted at wand-work as it is. Much better at Potions, although Snape never admits it." Padma pointed out.  
  
"Stephen Cornfut's has been as well."  
  
"His would." Pointed out Mandy. Stephen Cornfut was the House moron; the kind of person who made Mandy wonder if a village somewhere was missing its idiot.  
  
"Maybe there's a bout of wand rot going round?" Sue suggested vaguely.  
  
"Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that my wand was working last lesson, so it should do now, and will do tomorrow." Lisa paused. "I wonder where Boris is."  
  
"You can find him in the morning, Lis'. Seriously."  
  
"Okay, okay. G'night, then."  
  
"Good night everyone."  
  
And that was that; more or less.  
  
~*~  
  
Please take a few seconds to let me know what you think! 


	2. Red Hot Blood

Chapter 2  
  
Truth covered in security.  
  
I can't let you smother me.  
  
I'd like to but it wouldn't work.  
  
Trading off and taking turns.  
  
-- Lounge Act, by Nirvana  
  
~*~  
  
For anyone who didn't notice, I tried to find a verse (or whatever) of song to sum up the chapter in some way. Presumably you'll see how each bit relates as you read through the story. Or I might be totally rubbish at this stuff, and you'll keep on wondering why I'm putting bits of poem at the beginning of each chapter. As you please.  
  
Also, I've been accused of self-insertion… I beg to differ. Mandy is NOT me! Although some events in this chapter are kind of influenced by something that really happened. People are weirder then you think…  
  
Oh yes, and Terry Pratchett owns "The Colours of Magic"—I would have called this series by that title if the book wasn't so famous/probably copyrighted (which isn't to say that this fic is remotely influenced by him, let alone plagiarised—I just that I used a phrase that belongs to him, in it, or something.), so now you know. And JK Rowling owns everyone that I don't, except for Liv who owns herself. She lives in her own little world, thank God.  
  
This chapter is for Mike, with love. Just for being there, being cool, and understanding.  
  
Anyway… enjoy! And I hope y'all had a great Jubilee! And keep believing—in the face of all the evidence—that England ARE going to win the World Cup!  
  
Ginny ha-ha  
  
~*~  
  
Mandy awoke late; the dorm was devoid of her usual companions.  
  
"Sugar!" she cursed under her breath, wrenching herself out of bed, and scrabbling around the room, desperately looking for her various items of uniform. "Sugar, sugar, bloody sugar!" She hitched up her tights, managing to ladder them from top to toe, and fumbled with the buttons on her shirt, "Bloody typical… could have woke' me up… sugar, sugar, sugar and bloody, bloody bollocks…"  
  
Finally, ramming her hat onto her unbrushed fair hair, Mandy clattered to the Transfiguration classroom, to be met by the stern eye of Professor McGonagall. The Professor looked her student up and down, taking in her badly-knotted tie, trailing shoelaces, and breathlessly pink face. Mandy gave her what she fondly imagined—and sincerely hoped-- was a jaunty and winning smile.  
  
"Ah, Miss. Brocklehurst! How good of you to grace us with your presence this fine morning. That would be… let me see… the second time you've been late to my lessons this week, would it not?"  
  
"Yes, I know that, Professor. It wasn't my fault; I didn't sleep well last night, because--"  
  
"Miss. Brocklehurst," McGonagall interrupted, her voice sharp, so that it seemed to dig into her student, "I do not wish to know exactly why you may or may not have been up late at night, or why you have been sleeping in late so often, I merely wish you to sit down and be quiet, so that this class may get on and do the test. Five points from Ravenclaw." The Gryffindors in the class grinned smugly, whilst the other Ravenclaws cast their classmate dirty looks.  
  
Mandy scowled, and plonked herself ungraciously in her usual place between Lisa and Padma, accidentally-on-purpose giving each of them a hefty kick on the shin.  
  
"Thanks a bundle," she muttered, just loud enough for the two other girls to hear her, "Tell me, were you two born stupid, or did it take special training?"  
  
"Special training." nodded Stephen Cornfut, who sat just behind them and who habitually eavesdropped, grinned moronically, and gave her a mock sincere wink.  
  
"Push off, Steve."  
  
"Just because you have a deep and unresolved inferiority complex resulting in a craving for attention, Steve, don't take it out on--" Padma began, only to be interrupted by Lisa.  
  
"Shhh! McGonagall's coming!"  
  
Mandy avoided the teacher's eye as she was handed the test paper, lowering her face as if unexplainably fascinated by 'The Possible Side-effects Of Human Transfiguration When Performed without Due Training at Certain Times of the Lunar Calendar'.  
  
"You may begin." The order rang out across the classroom.  
  
Mandy began to write in the answers she knew, her quill nib scratching away on the rough parchment, glad that she had a good memory for such subjects.  
  
It wasn't as if she'd had to study hard, all though, of course, that Hermione Granger would come top of the class, as always. If Mandy studied and revised even half as hard as Granger, she would long ago have ended up in the hospital wing suffering from a nervous breakdown; she was not naturally good at hard work, and relied solely upon her memory after re- reading through her notes a few times. It rarely failed her. If she could do well without trying, why bother to be the best and by losing all the interesting things life had been known to present?  
  
Her chilly fingers found it hard to hold the quill pen, and the ink blotched over her page. The only sound was of the scrape of nibs on paper, and the noise of several students with severe colds trying to breathe without suffocating.  
  
Neville Longbottom seemed to have contracted a severe cough, and was doing his best to die quietly.  
  
Test? More like germ warfare.  
  
It occurred to Mandy that, if You Know Who ever wanted to kill off large proportions of the wizarding population, all he would have to do would be to shut them in a freezing cold Transfiguration classroom in mid- January. Avada Kedavra, eat your heart out.  
  
"If the moon is in Scorpio, this may present a problem, because the Moon at this phase represents the unbalancing of power, and power must be kept in constant balance between the spell caster and their Transfigured person/ object"…  
  
Mandy wondered what kind of jobs she could possibly do which relied upon any kind of knowledge about the Moon in Scorpio in regards to Human Transfiguration. She suspected that it was almost entirely useless, much like Recorder Choir at her Primary School, from which most students only came away from having mastered the ability to play 'Greensleeves' through their nose, or, in some cases, other— more interesting-- parts of the body.  
  
Mandy's rambling thoughts were suddenly interrupted.  
  
The silence had been broken by a sharp yell, and a moan of pain, followed by the clatter of desks falling, and a sickening crack like the breaking of bone. A clamour of gasps rose from the watchers.  
  
She whipped round to see what had happened; a bolt of fear ran her through, and she too felt a gasp catch painfully in her raw throat, despite the fact that she was not altogether amazed by the cause of this interruption.  
  
Harry Potter had collapsed, knocking his desk and its contents to the ground.  
  
Ink splattered over the stone ground, mixed with dark red; the boy had cracked his head as he hit the stone floor.  
  
Red blood and black ink, mingled on the ground around the moaning boy. Mandy stared, feeling nausea rise in her throat. She watched in horrified fascination, as a deep dread welled up inside her.  
  
Harry's body convulsed and shook as he lay on the floor, clutching at his forehead. His pain-filled moans made her skin creep. The nausea was rising again. The blood on the floor looked red. So red. A life- force flowing out of a body; warm; colourful; vivid; Vivid like the colours of magic.  
  
The sickening fear inside her seemed to grow ever greater as she stared, until it became unbearable, and she cried out harshly.  
  
The room, which had been silent with shock for that eternal second, was suddenly abuzz with noise; people shouting, shrieking, yelling, talking, and, Mandy more then suspected, trying to sneak each other the answers to the test. Even Neville's insistent coughing seemed to have been jolted into silence.  
  
More desks bit the dust as Hermione Granger dashed across the room to the unconscious body of her friend.  
  
Ron Weasley was clearly panicking, shouting something that no one seemed to register, their brains blank with shock.  
  
"Be quiet this instant! Be quiet! All of you be quiet, or I will take twenty points each from both of your Houses! Calm down!" Professor McGonagall strode across the room, her face pale and gaunt-looking, as if all the blood had left her, as it had Harry. "I want you all out of here now! The class is cancelled! Out! Go straight to your Common Rooms!" she glanced around, her eyes hastily scanning the row of pupils. "Stephen Cornfut?"  
  
"Yes, Miss?" She didn't bother to correct the boy's mistake.  
  
"Find Dumbledore. Tell him what has happened, and then join the rest of your House."  
  
"Yes, Miss!" Steve ran off, as the other students were hurried from the scene of Harry's collapse.  
  
With almost the entire class out in the corridor, all was chaos. Boys shouted, some of the girls sobbed, people shoved and muttered to each other in low, frightened voices; everyone knew what something like this meant. The Dark Lord is getting stronger. No-one dared say it; it remained an unspoken taboo, hovering in the frozen winter air. They had all heard that Harry hadn't defeated him last year. That meant he was rising…  
  
"Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!" Sue was gasping, "Oh my goodness!"  
  
"Shut up." muttered Lisa. Her jaw was clenched, and there was a look in her eyes that Mandy recognised as furtive fear. "Panicking won't solve nothing. Everyone's acting stupid, like… like a crowd of kids! We aught to be getting to the Common Room, like McGonagall said. What if You Know Who is in the school, and we're out here--?"  
  
"Oh, don't be silly!" Padma snapped. "He's not going to be bloody poncing around Hogwarts--"  
  
But Lavender Brown, catching the end of Lisa's sentence, repeated it in an ear-piercing shriek. Another ripple of panic ran through the gaggle of students, and everyone began talking at once, although no-one moved.  
  
"Shut up everyone! Shut up! Shut up!"  
  
"Oh my goodness, oh my goodness!"  
  
"You Know Who could be here in the castle, and we not know it!" Someone else continued Lisa's yell.  
  
"Don't be a daft ha'porth; he couldn't be, could he?"  
  
"Everything's going to be all right… right?"  
  
"This has happened before, so why panic? It'll be all right. You Know Who can't be here. Dumbledore--" Padma began. She was usually one of those people who could get others to listen to her without trying, but right now no-one wanted to know.  
  
"Dumbledore might not know!" Her twin argued back. "He can't know everything!"  
  
"Of course he'd flipping know."  
  
Another ripple of hasty talk ran through the students. People liked panic, it occurred to Mandy, looking around at her class-mates, bewildered. A bit of scandal and something to scream about, and they could keep themselves occupied for hours.  
  
"Shut up!" Lisa screeched, trying hopelessly to make her voice heard above the insistent babble.  
  
Mandy stood in the middle of it all, watching.  
  
It was making her head ache. All these silly, fussy people, just talking and talking, never doing anything, just panicking. And, for the most part, enjoying it, except for the odd few…  
  
Granger was talking in an over-loud voice about being sensible about things, while people ignored her as they usually did. Mandy could see red blotches on the Gryffindor girl's face from where she had been crying.  
  
A couple of the Gryffindor boys were proposing to keep everyone safe by fighting to the end. They were so stupid, Mandy thought, to assume they'd be any kind of a match for someone as powerful as the Dark Lord.  
  
Padma padded over to her friend, and gave her a strained smile.  
  
"Looks like something big is going to happen soon. Again."  
  
"Yes." Mandy was pretty damn sure that people in other schools didn't have to put up with this kind of thing ever single bloody year. It got monotonous.  
  
"Odd, isn't it, the way people panic. Something almost unimportant like this happens, and they all turn to headless chickens, but when something really dire happens, they'll all act really organised. I've noticed that." Padma informed her.  
  
"I'll bet you have."  
  
"Let's get Lisa and Sue, and get back to the Common Room. The Gryffindor lot can sort themselves out."  
  
The Ravenclaws, as a rule, did not look up to the Gryffindors. Yes, they were nice enough when the mood took them, but frankly stupid. And Seamus Finnegan smelt funny.  
  
"All right."  
  
~*~  
  
   
  
Charms was a pretty boring class, most students had to admit it.  
  
Today, the Hufflepuff and Slytherin fourth years were allowing Professor Flitwick to amuse himself whilst they passed notes to each other under the desk, doodled on their book covers, and played Squares and Hangman. It was that sort of a morning.  
  
The Professor turned back to his class, having finished noting down the various chants and movements for each charm. As if by magic, the notes, pencils and doodles disappeared into pockets.  
  
"Now, everyone get out your wands! Right! Now, the chant for this charm, the Time-Watching Charm, is Praefinio. Got that? Good good! Remember, it's down-two-three, flick-three-four, all right? Now; Praefinio!" A spectacular jet of magical light completely failed to shoot out of the end of the teacher's wand. "Oh for goodness sake, not again!"  
  
~*~  
  
The day continued. Fuss over, the students were sent back to their lessons, still nervous, chatty, and extremely over-excited about the morning's events, impossible to teach.  
  
A wave of panic and rumour had run through the entire school by teatime, and some of the more impressionable first years, who were less familiar with Hogwarts' usual state of panic, spent the rest of the day hiding in the toilets writing out wills, much to the older student's amusement.  
  
Lisa went round informing everyone that they should be calm about things, 'just in case', whilst Padma sighed and rolled her eyes, occasionally comforting people with a logical word, rather in the manner of one who became world-weary long ago and who can no longer be bothered to care.  
  
Sue seemed to be trying to stay calm, but betrayed herself by biting her usually neat nails down to stubs, and jumping a foot in the air whenever anyone spoke to her.  
  
Mandy, for her part, was less then happy about the morning's events, and was even less happy about what they could signify… supposing Lisa was right? Although there was no possible way that You Know Who could enter Hogwarts, of course. Everyone knew that. It had been hammered into them since first year.  
  
But… it was stupid to assume that someone like the Dark Lord couldn't enter the castle if he so wished. And even if he didn't and therefore wasn't, what if Potter had to face him once more? More to the point, what if Potter had to face him once more and failed?  
  
Dumbledore had never seemed to offer much help on this, and somehow, she just didn't feel safe knowing that the fate of the world was apparently in the hands of an unintelligent fifteen year old boy. Especially considering the fifteen-year-old boys she knew personally. And the fact that the Ministry of Magic was also involved didn't help matters much.  
  
Mandy had heard stories-- terrible stories-- of the time when the Dark Lord was in power. As good as unstoppable. Years later, the taboo around his name was still strong, so that even small children, too young to remember those times, barely dared to even think the name.  
  
She could not even begin to imagine what it must be like to return to your home, and see the Dark Mark hovering, ghost-like, in the air above it; discovering that people you had trusted had betrayed your dear ones; knowing what you would find inside.  
  
Even more students from the other years had started arriving now. The common room was like a bees' nest, abuzz with noise, filled with scrambling movement, humming with rumours and excitement, fear lurking in the corners, as if waiting to pounce.  
  
A sudden flash of vivid colour flashed across her mind as these thoughts ran through her head, making her reel backwards slightly. Colour… why was she suddenly stricken by these awful visions of colour? It was stupid!  
  
"Hey, watch it will you?!"  
  
Mandy blinked at the girl who had spoken, feeling dazed.  
  
Harry Potter heard screaming, saw all sorts, felt terrible pain—or so she'd heard—so what, by comparison, was so terrible about screens of colour dancing over her mind? But Potter had a reason for what he heard, saw and felt. He knew he wasn't going mad.  
  
"What's up wi' you, anyway?" the girl she had bumped into put her head on one side to look at her, parrot-like, and pushed her dark hair out of her eyes.  
  
She realised it was Liv Greenwize—a less-then-sane third year with a worrying grin, glinting eyes and a rather unfortunately obvious crush on a certain Gryffindor whose initials contained the letters H and P.  
  
"Nothing, Liv. Promise."  
  
"Oh, all right then. I assume that means 'no worse then anyone else'?"  
  
"Pretty much."  
  
"As I thought!"  
  
"Look, can I help you?"  
  
"Now there's a question. Can you help me? Can I help you? What are we here for? Who are we, really?"  
  
"I have no intention of helping you, and I wouldn't trust you to tell me that the sky was blue. Which it isn't. Because it's night time. But anyway; I don't know about you, but I'm here because I've had me tea and aren't allowed anywhere else after dark. What's more, I am Mandy Brocklehurst, and you, Olivia Alice Greenwize, are irritating me."  
  
"You seem very sure of that." Liv grinned again.  
  
"Oh, you have no idea." Mandy narrowed her eyes at the younger girl. Liv looked a little affronted.  
  
"Okay, I'm sorry mate. I only wondered what was wrong, what with you looking so… not with it… and all. We're all kind of uptight at the moment, I guess, what with all this…" She waved a hand around vaguely.  
  
"I know. I know… I'm just . . . feeling a bit stressed . . ." Mandy admitted, more to get Liv off her case then because it was true. She wasn't feeling stressed, so much as disturbed.  
  
Sometimes, she felt, just saying something out loud, or writing it down, could make it true. That was why no-one had really mentioned what really could happen. Torture, curses, fear, and death were never mentioned. It was all silly ideas, speculation buzzing through the air, making it vibrate with daft rumours. No-one talked about anything they really felt was possible.  
  
"Aren't we all?" Liv was looking around the room distractedly.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
"Have you seen Lexi McDougal anywhere?"  
  
"Yes, she's over there, picking the gold leafing off that portrait frame."  
  
"Ah. Oh yes. Didn't see her there…"  
  
"Look, Liv, how would I know where your mates are? Find 'em yourself."  
  
"I dunno, and I can't be arsed, somehow… What about Ginny Weasley?"  
  
"I have no idea, on the basis that she is in Gryffindor. She'll be with her House Mates somewhere, and good luck to her."  
  
"True." Liv looked non-committal.  
  
"You seem as out of sorts as anyone, today."  
  
"I'm looking for my friends; I don't call that 'out of sorts'."  
  
"True."  
  
"I'm looking on the bright side, we could be in Herbology. I hate Herbology. Who gives a damn about plants?"  
  
"Not you, obviously."  
  
"No way me! There are a million more interesting things in the world… and you know which of them I'm going to comment on…" Liv's eyes twinkled happily.  
  
"Let me take a wild guess. It's a Gryffindor boy in my year, with scarily bright green eyes, yes?"  
  
"Of course! You know me too well!"  
  
"Unfortunately." Agreed Mandy.  
  
"Do you think he's going to save the day again?" Liv's expression took on a look of dreaminess. "You know, I heard that he--"  
  
"Please, spare me the details!" Mandy had heard Liv's idea of 'exciting' information before. It tended to dwell upon such activities as her desired one's eating habits, or blood group, or something.  
  
"I'm going to go and find Padma. I just remembered that I leant her my book on the History of Gringotts, and I want it back." This wasn't entirely a lie—Mandy wanted it because it was large, heavy, and exactly the right kind of thing for hitting annoying fourth years over the head with.  
  
"Well fine then." Liv scowled, seemingly annoyed at Mandy's sudden desire to escape, "Have fun. Don't let You Know Who get you, har har." She flounced off.  
  
Mandy sighed, and wandered up to her dorm.  
  
Now she thought about it, talking to Padma didn't look like a promising option—it was only a matter of time before she started being really weird, and talking about psychological effects, or space/time vacuum wormholes, whatever they were.  
  
Mandy wondered vaguely where on earth these worms had apparently come across a time-travelling Hoover.  
  
~*~  
  
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